The Supreme Court released decisions Wednesday on two gay-marriage cases — a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (which limits federal benefits to opposite-sex couples) and another to a California referendum that bans gay marriage there. Here is our live blog.

OK, we’re going to shut down the live blog for the day. Thanks for joining us. To sum up: The Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling struck down the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples. It avoided a ruling on California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, saying it lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.

Meanwhile, Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, sharply condemned the rulings and vowed to continue opposing same-sex marriage. “There is a stench coming from these cases that has now stained the Supreme Court. They’ve allowed corrupt politicians and judges to betray the voters, rewarding them for their betrayal,” he said in a statement.

The New Yorker is reporting that President Barack Obama called Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the DOMA case. According to the New Yorker, Windsor said: “Hello, who am I talking to?” Windsor said. “Oh, Barack Obama? I wanted to thank you. I think your coming out for us made such a difference throughout the country.”

More from inside the court earlier: About 25 minutes into the proceedings, Chief Justice Roberts announced he would read the majority opinion in the California Proposition 8 ruling. Justice Alito rocked in his seat. Justice Scalia leaned way back, barely visible from much of the courtroom below. The chief justice’s statement, which avoided the constitutional merits of the voter-approved California gay marriage ban, was dryer than the DOMA ruling and prompted little reaction in the courtroom.

Later, Justice Scalia read the second decision of the day, unrelated to gay marriage. He quickly cut the tension by joking “I’m sorry about that but this is shorter.” The courtroom laughed. He stumbled in delivering his relatively brief majority opinion, saying “extortion” when he meant “coercion.”

“Wow, I almost blew that one,” he said, bringing laughs from Justice Kagan and from the audience.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor looked around the room as Justice Scalia read. She and Justice Kagan turned to look at him when Scalia heaped scorn on the majority for what he said was “self aggrandizement” in their opinion. Justice Kagan shot him a sideways glance as he questioned the majority’s “superior…moral judgement.”

Justice Antonin Scalia read his dissent on DOMA, which ran a couple minutes longer than Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion. His visible discomfort during Kennedy’s reading became clear when he began describing what the termed the “diseased root” (words he enunciated loudly for effect) that gave rise to what he said were errors in the majority opinion.

“Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis and President Clinton signed it into law. The House intervened in this case because the constitutionality of a law should be judged by the Court, not by the president unilaterally. While I am obviously disappointed in the ruling, it is always critical that we protect our system of checks and balances. A robust national debate over marriage will continue in the public square, and it is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman.”

More from California: “Today, we have taken another momentous step on the path to full equality and dignity for all Californians and all Americans,” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a statement released hours after the Supreme Court ruling.

President Barack Obama, in a statement, said: “I applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal – and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.) the first openly gay person to be elected to the Senate, said the courts decisions reflect “the progress we have all witnessed across our country.’’ She added: “One thing is clear; people’s views on marriage equality are changing because they believe LGBT family members, friends, and neighbors deserve to be treated like everyone else in the United States,’’ she said.

Pelosi said her first reaction was “Thank god.” She said: “I was thinking when we were walking over here, I’ll be devastated if it’s anything other than that, for two reasons,’’ she said. “For what it means for the lives of people first and foremost, but secondly it’s clearly unconstitutional. I’m glad to hear that the court agrees.”

The rulings were also welcomed by gay marriage supporters on Capitol Hill. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who represents San Francisco, learned about the DOMA ruling when someone passed her a note during a press conference about health care.

ProtectMarriage.com, the group that defended Prop 8 at the Supreme Court and put it on the California ballot, vowed to keep fighting in the courts to limit the scope of the court’s judgement. In a statement, it said: “While it is unfortunate that the Court’s ruling does not directly resolve questions about the scope of the trial court’s order against Prop 8, we will continue to defend Prop 8 and seek its enforcement until such time as there is a binding statewide order that renders Prop 8 unenforceable.” Read the full article.

In California, the Supreme Court’s ruling on Proposition 8 means that marriage for same-sex couples may resume in about a month, although there remain some legal avenues for those who oppose gay marriage to challenge whether it applies to all California residents. Read the full article.

Earlier, from inside the court: Justice Kennedy began reading the decision in the DOMA case and soon into his delivery it was clear the federal law was in trouble. As he described how the federal law intruded on traditional state domain over marriage, Justices Sotomayor and Breyer scanned the room. Justice Scalia removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, and shifted uncomfortably. Justice Alito, who earlier this week took criticism in the media for eye rolling, took sips from a coffee mug but sat otherwise stone faced.

Ted Olson, who in favor of gay marriage in the California Proposition 8 case, and Paul Clement, who argued on behalf of a group of lawmakers trying to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, were arguing another case and weren’t in Washington for the gay marriage decisions. No prominent lawmakers showed up, unlike last year when the court decided the Obamacare decision. Sri Srinivasan, who argued the government’s case refusing to reject DOMA, is now a federal appeals court judge and also wasn’t present. David Boies, who with Mr Olson argued for gay marriage in the California case, was in court.

More on Kennedy: Justice Kennedy, writing in today’s U.S. v. Windsor ruling on the Defense of Marriage Act, said: “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” And in the 1996 ruling Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado law that barred protected status for homosexuals, Justice Kennedy wrote: “A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.”

More on Prop 8: Chief Justice Roberts’s Prop 8 opinion for the majority says the court has “no authority” to decide the merits of the case. He also says the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shouldn’t have decided the case either. That appeals court had ruled Prop 8 unconstitutional.Here is the PDF of the ruling.

Programming Note: We will continue live blogging for a bit to fold in reactions and analysis. To sum up: Court strikes down DOMA 5-4, in big win for gay marriage backers. And court declines to rule of California’s Prop 8, saying it lacks standing. Again, 5-4.

More on Prop 8: The Supreme Court’s Prop 8 opinion does not fall along ideological lines. The chief justice’s majority opinion is joined by Justices Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer and Kagan. Justice Kennedy’s dissent is joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor.

In his dissent on Prop 8, Justice Kennedy says the court’s opinion undercuts supporters of state ballot initiatives. Proponents of a ballot initiative ought to be able to defend it in court when the state does not do so, he says. (Correction: Kennedy wrote the dissent on Prop 8. An earlier version of this post incorrectly said Kennedy’s dissent was on DOMA.)

From the Roberts opinion: “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to. We decline to do so for the first time here.” Update: Here is the PDF of the ruling.

Justice Scalia is now announcing the court’s opinion in the Sekhar case, on federal extortion law (see writeup earlier at 9:55 for more details). So there will be a short time before the court issues its ruling on California’s Prop 8.

The scene back outside the court: As reporters ran out of the court house with the news of DOMA’s defeat, the crowd assembled erupted into cheers. The celebration quickly tempered however as supporters eagerly awaited the courts ruling on prop 8. The crowd grew steadily thru out the morning, eventually sprawling across the street onto the edges of the Capitol’s east lawn.

On the dissents: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito wrote three separate dissenting opinions in the Defense of Marriage Act case. Justice Scalia’s was supported in part by Chief Justice Roberts while Justice Clarence Thomas joined in whole or in part the Scalia and Alito dissents.

Justice Kennedy, who authored the majority opinion striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act on Wednesday, has bolstered gay rights several times during his tenure on the high court. In 2003 he wrote for the majority in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws across the country and in 1996 also wrote for the majority in Romer v. Evans that advanced gay rights and helped set the state for both the earlier Lawrence decision and today’s DOMA ruling.

More from Justice Kennedy’s majority decision: “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” Here is the full ruling.

Chief Justice John Roberts’s separate dissent hints at a ruling on standing grounds in the Proposition 8 case. He says the court holds today that it lacks jurisdiction to consider state marriage definitions affecting same-sex couples. We’ll have the Proposition 8 ruling shortly.

“By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition,” Scalia writes.

In the DOMA ruling, Justice Kennedy was joined by the four members of the court’s liberal wing—Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan–while Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The case was argued in April, and court watchers speculate that Justice Antonin Scalia will be writing that opinion because he is the only justice who hasn’t announced an opinion from that month’s session of arguments.

That case is Sekhar v. United States, a case that examines federal extortion law. The case centers on allegations that an investment fund manager threatened to reveal a New York government attorney’s alleged extramarital affair unless the attorney reversed an adverse recommendation on where the state should invest employee pension funds.

Both gay-marriage cases arrived at the Supreme Court in an unusual position: The state and federal governments, which typically defend their laws from court challenges, instead agreed with the plaintiffs that Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act were unconstitutional. Under federal court rules, that fact raises a procedural question of whether there is any legal dispute to decide at all.

Quick recap on the gay marriage cases: The first case is Prop 8, a November 2008 California voter initiative that abolished same-sex couples’ right to marriage, which earlier that year the California Supreme Court had recognized under provisions of the state constitution. The second case involves the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which denies federal benefits to same-sex spouses, whose marriages currently are authorized by 12 states, several American Indian tribes and the District of Columbia.

There are procedural issues in both cases that could allow the Supreme Court to avoid making the tough calls. And as Jess Bravin noted earlier, a thicket of legal issues could obscure the simple yes-or-no choice that voters, legislators and judges have made in dozens of states.

Some traveled a long way to be at the court. “Anything my heterosexual white husband can do, anyone in this country should be able to do,” said Helen Barnes, 52, of Jackson, Miss. “We are strong proponents of all human rights.”

A crowd of several hundred has gathered outside the Supreme Court ahead of Wednesday’s two big same-sex marriage decisions. Many in the overwhelmingly pro-gay marriage crowd carried rainbow flags and wore rainbow clothing.

The rulings come amid a broad shift in American’s attitudes towards gay marriage and gay rights. In April 2013, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found 53% favored allowing same-sex couples to wed. Ten years earlier, just 32% were in favor, as we noted today.

Comments (5 of 15)

Looks like a rich sister lying on her deathbed will now be able to marry her younger (poor sister) and pass on her riches to her.....If not, why not?

6:09 pm June 28, 2013

calmo wrote:

What the Supreme Court has ruled is that God is false, immoral, and socially destructive. His condemnation of homosexuality dates bad to thirteen centuries before Christ . . . before the Christian era.

11:52 pm June 27, 2013

Darlene wrote:

I got married in Nevada in 1982. I assumed that my marriage was legal everywhere in the US no matter what state I got married in, the other states considered it legal...right. So if a gay couple is married in a state like California (where it is legal...soon) won't that couple be considered legally married in all the other states.Only DMV has requested a copy of my marriage license/certificate (I don't even believe that was constitutional) and life insurance companies have asked for proof of marriage. So are the couple marriage only legal in states that have gay marriage rights? Will married couples not be married if they move to a state that doesn't have gay marriage? Even heterosexual marriage has become under attack for all of the stuff attached to it, 50% of those marriages end in divorce, I wonder how many gay marriages will end in divorce? Will they have a better track record that the "marriages" defended by the conservative right and the churches? Live and let live folks, if they love each other and want try this "married" life, more power to them!
D

2:34 pm June 26, 2013

Jason wrote:

I don't care about gay people any more or less than straight people when it comes to who they love or don't love or who they marry or don't. It is not my business no matter how religious I claim to be or for any other reason I may believe gives me standing to dictate how one must live their life. And it is certainly not the federal government's business to make these decisions, for or against.

What really bothers me about the sort of social issues involved in today's rulings is how they are used to marginalize subtantive issues that should matter to the country as a whole, e.g., spending, immigration, energy, regulation, or international political issues. But I guess if we as a society focused on those substantive issues then our elected officials might be compelled to do so as well rather than getting riled up about who can or cannot marry.

12:19 pm June 26, 2013

Beasty49 wrote:

This is great!! Soon I'll be able to marry my dog and horse. We are such a loving 3 some.

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